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Coal All The Way

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People are still reading this week, right?

I know this is YT, so to be expected perhaps, but I suppose I'm a tiny bit sad because I wrote 3 mid-length fics (between 4.5k and 9k) that I spent a lot of time on and am actually proud of, and I got enthusiastic comments from all three recips, so I assume that they aren't horrible and that perhaps one or the other person aside from the recips might like them too ... except there's very little in terms of hits/kudos/comments. I'm super glad that I seem to have made my recips happy with what I wrote, though, so there's that.

It’s been 25 hours, Christians are doing their stuff, it’s the middle of Hanukkah, and everyone else in between is either working since it is the middle of the week or on vacation with obligations. Day 1 is for getting the comments they have to leave on their gifts. As we move forward, people will probably start with the shortest fics first and move up. Most people won’t see casual traffic until the weekend. Also this is Yuletide, where fandoms are small.

+1

I would expect to see a big boost today (at least in America, a lot of people have off, but less family obligations) and this weekend (it's the weekend).

My first trawl through, exclude all m/m and m/f then trawl the entire archive, came up with thirtysome interesting fics of which I still have 15 tabs open to finish. If I’ve time and interest I’ll come back and go through the fandom page for every fandom I know without filtering out m/m or m/f.

I've always found my longer stories take longer to get comments and get a lot fewer than short ones, with a few exceptions. Just try to have patience, coalie. I for one have only had time to read and comment on my gift and then I hit the other stories in that fandom, and will spread way out through the archive starting tomorrow.

That's one the one hand comforting but also a little sad ... considering that people often complain on meme (FFA and coal) about short-ish gifts to the point where it seems like a faux-pas to gift 1500 words or less, it's a little ironic that apparently those short gifts do better in terms of kudos and comments.

I get it, it's easier to read 1-2k and dash off a quick comment - there's already a 20k fic that I have set aside because I know it would take me too long to read it properly. But it's frustrating to feel the pressure to write longer fic and then see relatively little payoff, compared to shorter fics.

DC IME, as someone who writes both 10K+ fics and 1-2K fics, the 1-2K stuff does better in the short term. The 10K+ stuff starts gaining steam towards the end of the week and will continue getting enthusiastic comments and kudos as new readers stumble across it for the next year (or longer).

This is my experience too. I've had some longer YT fics not get a lot of attention, but the long tail kicks in and people also go through the archives looking for their fandoms later on.

But it's frustrating to feel the pressure to write longer fic and then see relatively little payoff, compared to shorter fics.

As above nonny said, I tend to find things even out over time, and long fics often have more legs.

But also -- this right here is part of why how good a commentor the recip is influences how long I'm willing to write. Writing 15k+ can feel worth it even with just a recip comment if that recip comment is a full comment box or more of squee, analysis, etc. Not so much of the recip comment is only a few lines.

I feel like some of the comments above don’t really get why people comment on short fics first, and your comment really doesn’t get it at all. It’s not that people are looking for ~easy stimulation or something rather than the engagement of the longfic.

1) Most people like to get their commenting done before the anon period is up. Prioritizing longfic can slow you down.

2) On coal especially, lots of people are interested in making people happy and/or developing a reputation for being a good egg. That means reading widely and commenting on as many fics as possible. Reading 15 1k fics in a day will mean you left 15 comments, making the authors happy and generating good will for your reputation. If you devoted all of today to reading 1 or 2 longfics, only those authors would be happy.

3) Not everyone is a thoughtful/long commenter. Knowing you’re going to leave a one paragraph comment on a 2k fic is fine, but it is daunting to some people to know they’ll do it on a 19k one, and so they put it off.

4) Authors are fretting. If you care, reading a lot of shortfic is a good way to help bring up the general Yuletide mood.

lots of people are interested in making people happy and/or developing a reputation for being a good egg

I'm not saying there's no one out there who comments early specifically because they want to "develop a reputation," but I would be honestly shocked if it was more than like, one or two people.

AYRT

Uhm, I'm not sure where I said that readers are looking for "easy stimulation"?

I simply said that it doesn't take as much time to read 1-2k as it takes to read 15k, which seems a pretty obvious statement to make, and yes, all the reasons you list are based on the same assumption - that it takes less time to read short fic. I assume we are not going to have to argue about the linear passing of time or standard time measurements here, so I'm not entirely sure why you think we got it all wrong.

I assume we are not going to have to argue about the linear passing of time or standard time measurements here
Awwwww. I would be totally into wank of that level of abstraction and quality, whether based in the Coalies diverging interpretations of physics or metaphysics.

let people enjoy their holiday food comas

I spent all day yesterday with family and barely managed to scrape up time to read and comment on my gift. I'm working today and tomorrow. I won't be doing most of my reading until this weekend, and I'd imagine I'm not the only one.

I haven't hasn't time to even look at anything but my gift yet, and won't until probably tomorrow.

+1

Still writing the comment for my gift, everything else comes after that!

I spent my whole day between a family Christmas and reading through my wonderful longfic gift + leaving them a comment that's longer than the minimum yuletide wordcount, so I'm only now opening the fandoms page! And reading from Z upwards.

I haven't even made it through C yet. I've written two fics in the same range too, and those are the ones that comments take the longest on, in my experience. Some people just leave the longfic for last.

I was still writing for madness until 3am this morning, so all I'd had time to do was comment on my two gifts and comment on the other stories in those fandoms because those were obviously the fandoms I was most jazzed about reading.

Today is the first day I have to read at will, and I know I'm not alone.

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